Utah Parents Heated After Discovering DOJ ‘Mining’ Racial Data, Names of Their Children

Utah parents in the Davis School District are sounding the alarm after discovering the Department of Justice was collecting racial and ethnic data on their children.

The DOJ’s investigation into the district began in July 2019 by the Civil Rights Division, which probed into complaints of racial discrimination. The settlement, agreed upon in October 2021, included handing over the racial and ethnic makeup of individual students, teachers and administrators. The district sent in the students’ data on July 1, per the agreement.

Parents in the Davis School District said they felt betrayed by the invasive nature of the settlement agreement, which required a “master list of all students including each student’s name, student ID, race/ethnicity, grade, and school.”

Corrine Johnson of Utah Parents United told Fox News Digital, “I believe it’s an absolute overreach of the DOJ.”

“I do want to make it clear that we absolutely understand that racism exists, and it happens, and it happens in Utah… But we see absolutely no reason to collect demographic data, especially racial demographic data, on an entire school district,” she said.

“The DOJ was brought in to help foster a more inclusive environment and data mining our children have no place in that,” Johnson added. “By collecting racial data, the idea, I’m assuming, is we’re trying to racially profile students. And we believe that racial profiling only leads to more discrimination.”

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The DOJ’s investigation found severe allegations of discrimination. For example, the DOJ said that non-Black students called Black students the “n-word,” “monkeys or apes;” and taunted them with monkey noises. The investigation concluded that the “pervasive” and “offensive race-based harassment” plaguing schools was caused because the district was “deliberately indifferent to known student harassment based on race.”

It was also unclear how long the data will be retained. {snip}

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